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Original · left

Spider (arachnid)

An eight-legged predatory arachnid with fangs, spinnerets, and silk-producing abdominal organs.

First in use: ancient / pre-modern
Duplicate · right

Spider (web crawler)

A specialized search engine bot dispatched to traverse internet sites and harvest data for indexing.

First in use: the 1990s

Spider / Spider (arachnid) / Spider (web crawler)

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Duplicate share · 12 mo—
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Colour keyGrey · original meaningGreen · duplicate meaningAmber · contested (40–60%)How colours work

Arachnids vs. search bots.

Which meaning of Spider is the original, and which one is the duplicate riding on its name? Spider (arachnid) came first (ancient / pre-modern). Spider (web crawler) arrived in the 1990s. The data below shows which one owns the word now.

Wikipedia pageviews since 2015

Spider (arachnid)Spider (web crawler)
English Wikipedia pageviews since July 2015 load here.

Duplicate's share of attention

Green line = duplicate's % · above 60 it owns the word · below 40 the original does

Share-of-attention line loads here.

The case for each meaning

Sourced definitions, usage stats and quotes

Original · ancient / pre-modern

Spider (arachnid)

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Duplicate · the 1990s

Spider (web crawler)

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More duplicated terms

Internet & gaming culture